Synopsis

Stella Ortiz has a loving family, great friends, and a promising future. The only thing she doesn’t have is a boyfriend. But when she starts dating mysterious transfer student Sebastian Weber, her friends become determined to break up the fledgling pair. It's just not a good idea to go out with a guy who misses tons of school and day-drinks something that smells like pennies, right?

What starts as a simple intervention turns deadly when Sebastian initiates the process that will change Stella into a vampire. Suddenly, the clock is ticking—and to make matters worse, Sebastian’s vampiric family comes to town, bringing their own drama and complications. Stella and her friends have to find a cure for vampirism, stay one step ahead of Sebastian’s sinister maker, and somehow survive high school. And there’s one more wrench in the situation: As the friends quickly discover, most legends agree that there’s one cure for a vampire-to-be … killing the vampire who turned them.

Sometimes, breakups really are a matter of life and death.

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Review

**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review**

The First Bite is the Deepest drew me in with it's alluring title and synopsis. The synopsis makes it seem as though Stella is the main character, and while most of what is happening is happening to her, the book constantly flips between the perspectives of all her friends; Nadia, Austin, and Jenny. Which brings me to the issues I had with the book.

The flipping of perspectives and switching of scenes within a chapter are not very well spaced. It took me until halfway through the book and picking up the actual kindle copy (I initially received a PDF in exchange for my honest review) to realize that there was indeed notice that something was changing. Usually when perspective changes or a scene changes, there's a noticable space, or maybe asterisks are used, but the spaces were only slightly bigger between paragraphs during a scene change, compared to the spaces between regular paragraphs. This made it very frustrating to read when it seemed like things were just randomly changing with no warning.

I almost stopped reading at the halfway point because of this. I shut down the app and went to bed and decided to give it another try the next day. It was only then that I realized the slightly bigger space between scene and perspective changes.

It also states in the synopsis that this is a "mordant take on vampire romance". There wasn't really a lot of romance with the two main characters and it wasn't really done in a funny way. I have an odd sense of humor though, so I could have just missed what was supposed to be funny about it. We do see more romance with two of the side characters, which I enjoyed a lot more than the romance between Stella and Sebastion.

I did like the fact that it wasn't a typical teen/vamp romance, though I can't quite explain how it's not a typical teen/vamp romance without giving spoilers. Also, I loved the diversity of the characters. It wasn't all 'in your face, look at me I have diverse characters'. It was very natural.

Unfortunately, it ended very abruptly for me. It read as though there was going to be a little bit more and then just ended. I double checked between both copies to make sure it wasn't some error with the PDF, but it was the same for both.

Overall, a very nice premise and story, but maybe not the type of book for me.